If Google did not disclose PR...

If Google did not disclose PR of web pages on the net ...how different would be your approach to SEO?

Would that discourage people from exchanging links indiscriminately and make them look for more relevant links? Would that discourage people from trading links (buying /selling)?

Would it make your SEO tasks difficult..?

 

Me thinks that link trading would be a fraction of what it is since more research would be required.

 

I think in a sense Google is already doing that, since public PR updates are infrequent at best. The problem is that I think a lot of people who should know better don't realize that the public toolbar is probably out of date a week after the last update.

I don't think it would change anything I do at all if it weren't available.

 

The one difference I think that would be seen is that people would actually ask "what's your traffic?" before buying a link on the link sales forum.

 

you can find many quality links independant of PageRank by looking at co citation and then evaluating the page / site to see if they were made with care for human consumption.

 

sure enough the linkadage style trade wouldent exist, but pageranks far too over-rated, people go into seo thinking pr is the magic key to number 1. Forget pr and effectively use your time building content and good links

 

If PR didnt exist it wouldnt change anything with regards to SEO as PR isnt the be all and end all of SEO.

Most people use PR as a tool to get quality links but PR is actually relative to the industry and the number of links / sites in it. A link from a website with a PR 8 in the finance sector to another site in the finance sector is no better than a PR 2 link from 2 websites about farmers throwing hay bales.

If the link is directory related it doesnt matter about the PR of the website in my opinion anyway, some people will disagree but in my experience its all relative to the industry your site fits in...

1 thing PR is good for however is seeing if a website may of been penalised or banned by Google which people class as "bad neighbourhoods", steering clear of these is a very good idea and the toolbar can be good for this...

 

For me, the main think it would change is it would require me to do backlink research on a site instead of just looking at the PR. For me, PR is just a shortcut to determine backlinks & if the site is banned by Google.

 

On what do you base this conclusion?

See above - what do you mean and why do you say this?

Not really. Since public/toolbar PR is updated only infrequently these days, ay any point in time other than immediately following the last Toolbar PR update, the value you're seeing is probably out of date. Thsus, neither the presence of PR or the absence of PR on the toolbar should be taken as evidence that a page is banned or cleared as "good".

 

for me PR is the first indication a page is worth exchanging links with...
if the PR is okay I do some further research about the page... but all starts with the PR for me...

 

Well see my post above. I don't think that's a very good strategy.

 

that's the fasted way for me...
I don't have much time to spend on "research"

 

Fine by me, as long as you don't mind being led astray fairly frequently.

 

Minstrel the basis of a low PR link being as godo as a high one is this....

You might have 1 million sites about finance and so by getting links form all of them you might get a number 1 position and a good pagerank e.g. 8....

If there where only 10 sites about bale throwers its likely the PR for those sites is going to be much lower, you might get a PR 2 if you are lucky.

The actual point is, just because you only have a PR 2, if you have links from all the Bale Throwing sites you will likely still get a number 1 spot.

Hense - The PR value is pointless, the industry you are in changes the PR you could get.

 

I think your confused about something there, immorta.

Low PR links may be helpful but (1) I don't know of anything that would support your claim that any PR2 link is better than a PR8 link, no matter what "industry" it comes from; and (2) your claim that links from outside your "industry" carry more weight than links from within your "industry" doesn't make any sense at all and goes against the grain of the whole conecpt of relevancy.

 

Point of view, seems to of worked for me for the last few years....

 

I don't think it's called "point of view", Immorta... I think it's called "superstitious thinking".

 

If PR wasn't taken into consideration SEO strategies will surely change. Although link exchange might not inexisit completely, but it will definitely lack the quality criterion that currently is rather important. The infrequency of the google PR update might diminish its importance, but still it has become an important industry factor in verifying the importance of a link exchange with a certain website.

It also is quite an important way of telling before exchanging links with a website if it is penalized by google.

 

I think if Google stopped showing pagerank, it would leave the door wide open for other people to create their own value/ranking systems.

 

I think if Google stopped showing pagerank, it would leave the door wide open for other people to create their own value/ranking systems.